Bridget Riley

OVERVIEW

Attributes

Female

About the artist

1931: Was born in Norwood, Reino Unido

It was during this time that Riley began to paint the black and white works for which she is best known. They present a great variety of geometric forms that produce sensations of movement or colour. In the early 1960s, her works were said to induce sensation in viewers as varied as seasick and sky diving. From 1961 to 1964 she worked with the contrast of black and white, occasionally introducing tonal scales of grey. Works in this style comprised her first 1962 solo show at Musgrave's Gallery One, as well as numerous subsequent shows. For example, in Fall, a single perpendiculars curve is repeated to create a field of varying optical frequencies. Visually, these works relate to many concerns of the period: a perceived need for audience participation (this relates them to the Happenings, for which the period is famous), challenges to the notion of the mind-body duality which led Aldous Huxley to experiment with hallucinogenic drugsconcerns with a tension between a scientific future which might be very beneficial or might lead to a nuclear war; and fears about the loss of genuine individual experience in a Brave New World. Her paintings have, since 1961, been executed by assistants from her own endlessly edited studies.

Riley began investigating colour in 1967, the year in which she produced her first stripe painting.Following a major retrospective in the early 1970s, Riley began travelling extensively. After a trip to Egypt in the early 1980s, where she was inspired by colourful hieroglyphic decoration, Riley began to explore colour and contrast.In some works, lines of colour are used to created a shimmering effect, while in others the canvas is filled with tessellating patterns. Typical of these later colourful works is Shadow Play.

In many works since this period, Riley has employed others to paint the pieces, while she concentrates on the actual design of her work.Some are titled after particular dates, others after specific locations (for instance, Les Bassacs, the village in the south of France where Riley has a studio).

Following a visit to Egypt in 1980–81 Riley created colours in what she called her “Egyptian palette” and produced works such as the Ka and Ra series, which capture the spirit of the country, ancient and modern, and reflect the colours of the Egyptian landscape. Invoking the sensorial memory of her travels, the paintings produced between 1980 and 1985 exhibit Riley's free reconstruction of the restricted chromatic palette discovered abroad. In 1983 for the first time in fifteen years, Riley returned to Venice to once again study the paintings that form the basis of European colourism. Towards the end of the 1980s Riley's work underwent a dramatic change with the reintroduction of the diagonal in the form of a sequence of parallelograms used to disrupt and animate the vertical stripes that had characterized her previous paintings. In Delos (1983), for example, blue, turquoise, and emerald hues alternate with rich yellows, reds and white.

Other artists that may interest you

EXHIBITIONS

Past exhibitions

FEB 09 - JUN 16, 2013Solo Exhibition

Cranford Collection. Out of the HouseFundación Banco Santander - Madrid, Spain
Cranford Collection has been a driving and uncompromising force in the London art scene of the last decade. "Out of the House" will be the first occasion to see the collection outside the domestic context where it usually is shown. The exhibition will focus on...

JUN 08 - JUL 20, 2013Solo Exhibition

Bridget RileyGalerie Max Hetzler - Berlin - Berlin, Germany
Bridget Riley was born at Norwood, London, the daughter of a businessman. Her childhood was spent in Cornwall and Lincolnshire. She studied at Goldsmiths' College from 1949 to 1952, and at the Royal College of Art from 1952 to 1955. She began painting figure...

We apply First-Party-Cookies and Third-Party-Cookies, to give you best server experience and a more personalized service. If you continue visiting our website, we consider that you accept the use of cookies. More information here